Bengals’ Thursday Night Throwback Features Return Of Amazon’s FitzMagic And Big Whit

On Monday, they talked about the Bengals’ 27-12 victory over the Jets in New York and “Mike got to see the kids and Melissa.” For Mike Brown, this is old home week. Fitzpatrick was at Sunday’s game at MetLife Stadium for Jeff Mangold’s induction into the Jets Ring of Honor and when he saw Mike Brown three boxes down from him, he had to say hello to his fellow former Ivy League quarterback.

First, he had to talk his way past security wearing a flannel shirt and his 19th century beard. “I’m Ryan Fitzpatrick,” FitzMagic said. “I used to play for the Bengals.”

“And everyone else,” he could have added.

But Fitzpatrick knows that it was playing for the Bengals that jump-started his everyman but enormous 17-year sojourn. Brown, a former Dartmouth quarterback, knew what he meant to the Crimson and hoped to sign Fitzpatrick after the 2005 draft to back up Carson Palmer.

When the Rams grabbed him in the seventh round, Brown traded for him at the 2007 cutdown. When Palmer went down for most of the 2008 season, Fitzpatrick got the most extended work of his career. While he teamed with Whitworth to keep the locker room together and set the table for the 2009 AFC North sweep, Fitzpatrick parlayed it into a big money deal with the Bills and was off.

“Back in the Peyton Manning days, it was tough being a third quarterback,” Fitzpatrick says. “When I became a backup, the No. 2, that was huge for a guy just trying to hang on.”

Always popular and personable, Fitzpatrick loved how new Bengals center Ted Karras, like Mangold, one of so many of his centers, called his name in his post-game media scrum in anticipation of Thursday night. Karras, it will be recalled, displays a signed photo in his home of him and Fitzpatrick exulting after some FitzMagic.

“Teddy called me from the locker room,” Fitzpatrick says. “I told him, I’ll have to wait to see you Thursday.”

Here’s how FitzMagic sees some present day hocus-pocus in Burrow:

“I love watching him play because not only does he have the weapons…